The 2016 Elections and the Beginning of the End
My Facebook Account being disabled started with Russia and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
Advertisements bought by Russian operatives for the Facebook social media site are estimated to have reached 10 million users. But many more Facebook users were contacted by accounts created by Russian actors. 470 Facebook accounts are known to have been created by Russians during the 2016 campaign. Of those accounts six generated content that was shared at least 340 million times.
After the Russian hacking of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and Facebook being used in their espionage via fake personal accounts, groups, and pages, public scrutiny and criticism changed the environment of Facebook.
To combat what the Russians had done, Facebook instituted many new rules. One of those new rules disallowed auto-publication to personal Facebook Accounts.
I was one of the users utilizing auto-publication on my personal Facebook Account so this was a blow. I had almost two hundred friends that sometimes clicked and viewed the articles that were published there. I had no time to post each new article on my profile so I adjusted to the lack of auto-publication on my personal account and moved on.
As I began paying more and more attention to Facebook and Facebook Groups about two and a half years ago, I saw people liked what I was creating (I had over 500K followers across all my groups and pages). I spoke and had conversations with many people daily, some weekly. I constantly talked about films, TV show episodes, and their foibles.
I began logging into my Facebook Account from work on a personal laptop and my office computer.
Facebook began challenging me, saying they thought my account had be comprised, asking me to verify my identity (pick recent comments that I had made, etc.) and to change my password.
I did this, with no exaggeration, 10-20 times between the spring and summer of 2018-2019. I was a machine on Facebook, working hard to admin and grow my groups, and because of my activity, Facebook trip-wires thought that I was a robot (bot).
Eventually they asked me to submit an ID. I did so. I was able to log back in instantly. I don’t even think they looked at it. They just wanted to see that I uploaded something.
Within a year, maybe two, I projected that I would have a million plus followers across all my groups and pages on Facebook. It would have been an incredible feat to accomplish (like YouTubers that reach that milestone). I was looking forward to it.
The End
In August 2019, I was being particular aggressive in commenting rapidly (I had over forty groups by that point), group linking, etc. and got asked to prove my identity by uploading a photo ID that matched the name on my profile. I had uploaded my Driver’s License on the previous identity challenge so I thought everything would be fine. I uploaded that ID again.
They told me that while they were checking, that I would not be able to access my account. That was something new. Previously following the upload, I was given access again immediately and asked to change my password.
Because of this new wrinkle, I grew trepidatious. Fearful.
This time they weren’t just trying to confirm that I was not a bot. They were actually going to compare the name on my ID to the name on my account.
Two days later I tried to access my Facebook Account.
I was informed by the on-screen message that my account had been disabled.
